


The Kill

by erolyn2



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-18
Updated: 2012-10-18
Packaged: 2017-11-16 13:24:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erolyn2/pseuds/erolyn2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“She would be a warrior, not a lady, like her mother and all their mothers before.” Jorah remembers his oldest cousin’s first kill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kill

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to mrstater for her beta/suggestions.

The first thing he remembered was the squirrel.

For her tenth birthday he had given little Dacey a bow, carved from pine and fitted for her slender hands. She had been training with her Morningstar for years already, but Jorah thought it was time she learned long-range combat as well.

“You can learn to fire from horseback,” he explained, “and it’s easier to hunt with. For small game, at least.”

“Not for bears?”

The girl had been hunting with the men a handful of times and already had a bearskin cloak to show for it, but that wasn’t what he’d intended this gift for.

“No. Not for bears. You know why?”

Dacey grinned. “You can’t miss a bear.”

“That’s right.”

She stared at her present, tracing her fingers along the handle, then looked carefully from Jorah to her mother seated across the table.

“Oh, go on then,” Maege grumbled.

She jumped from her seat before her mother could change her mind, dashing through the door with bow in hand. For several mornings after, the girl was a constant presence in the yard, flinging arrow after arrow at a well-abused target which was, unfortunately, taking little abuse from Lady Maege’s daughter.

“Keep your arm straight”, he’d told her, lifting her drooping elbow. “Make sure the string stays taut.”

She frowned, forming a little furrow of concentration in her small brow. Her arm was nearly shaking, but she kept still until he told her to let go and the thwack of contact told him she’d made her first shot.

And then one evening a brown blur flew at him in the hall.

“Cousin Jorah, look!”

The girl thrust a mass of fur and blood in his face, too close for him to discern what it had once been. Fortunately, she did not wait for his response.

“I killed a squirrel!”

The mass of fur was rodent-sized, he now noticed, and weighed down by a large fluffy tail. “So you did.”

He looked her over. Her long braid was all undone, her hands splotched with blood, her cheeks flushed with excitement and cold. _Her first kill_ , he thought, _but not her last._ She would be a warrior, not a lady, like her mother and all their mothers before. _How will you celebrate when a man’s blood runs down your arms for the first time, little one?_

“Can we eat it?”

Jorah blanched at the thought. There was little meat on a squirrel, and what there was was tough and gamey. He’d only eaten them on long marches, when there was nothing else to be had.

But Dacey was beaming at him, so he cooked it with her, and ate it, and though she spit the first mouthful on the ground they both finished what was left of the tiny animal. His cousin had immediately vowed only to hunt tastier game in the future, but he could see the pride in her eyes at the success of her first solo hunt.

Little had he known, then, that squirrel would seem a delicacy compared to the fare he would find in Essos, in the exile that would keep him from riding south with his family when the King in the North revolted. From being at her side when the axe cut her down.

When they told him he thought of the squirrel first. He could still taste it, the lingering metallic flavor of charred blood, and knew it would always taste of failure.


End file.
